DID JESUS BELIEVE IN INCOME EQUALITY?

I couldn’t find one instance where Jesus affirms income equality (IE). Perhaps the parable that comes closest to supporting IE is the parable about an owner who repeatedly goes to the market to hire workers for his vineyard and pays each the same amount, irrespective of how long they had worked. When those who had worked the longest complained, the owner answered:

·       “’Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ So the last will be first, and the first last.” (Matthew 20:13-16; ESV)

Jesus never suggested that His ideal is IE. Instead, there are a number of reasons that this teaching shouldn’t be taken as a repudiation of capitalism in favor of IE:

1.    Jesus affirmed, as He did in all of His parables, the legitimacy of the employer/employee relationship.

2.    Jesus also affirmed the legitimacy of the owner/employer having disproportionate wealth.

3.    He affirmed the fact that ultimately there will be some who are first and some last. Not all will have the same thing.

4.    Above all else, the owner gave out of generosity and not because he owed it to his employees or to the government.

In other parables, Jesus affirmed the legitimacy of capitalism even more directly. Another parable featured the owner of a vineyard who had leased it out to tenants. However, the tenants, perhaps advocates of IE refused to pay the landlord the profits due to him. However, Jesus sided with the landlord (Matthew 21:33-41; Mark 12:1-9; Luke 20:9-16).

Jesus used the father of the Prodigal Son as a positive role model. However, he had numerous “hired servants” (Luke 15:17) and evidently great wealth. Even in the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, who ended up in a place of torment, there is no indication that his wealth had been the problem, but rather that he refused to share what he had (Luke 16:19-31).

In fact, it is important to note that Jesus never criticized but endorsed the Mosaic Law. Instead, He often criticized those who departed from it (Matthew 15:1-8; John 5:44-47). However, the Law had nothing to say against being rich and having employees, even servants. In fact, God had blessed many – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job, David, and Solomon – with great wealth. While the Law did mention equality, it was never a matter of IE.

Jesus’ teachings were in tandem with the Mosaic. He too endorsed the principle that the hard worker should be able to reap his rewards.

Jesus told a parable about a wealthy landowner who was leaving in a long journey. He therefore entrusted with money so that they would use it to make a profit for him. Most did so and were commended by the landowner upon his return. However, one servant simply buried it and returned to his master the very amount that had been entrusted to him.

The master did not commend him but berated him:

·       “‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.’” (Matthew 25:26-29)

Not only did Jesus affirm the master/servant relationship, He also affirmed the fact that the master was using the servant to make a profit. Even “worse,” Jesus affirmed that the little that the “slothful servant” had should be taken from him and given to those who had much more – hardly an advocacy for IE.

Of course, Jesus wasn’t advocating unrestrained capitalism. The Mosaic Law contained numerous safeguards and provisions for the poor. However, the Law didn’t suppress individual initiative, the essential element of capitalism.

However, many, even “Christians,” are not aware of Jesus’ teachings and, therefore, tend to understand Him in a way that affirms their own modern, progressive values. One New York Times columnist cited a fringe figure, Brian McLaren, as proof that the Church is not following its Founder:

·       “Our religions often stand for the very opposite of what their founders stood for…”

·       “No wonder more and more of us who are Christians by birth, by choice, or both find ourselves shaking our heads and asking, ‘What happened to Christianity?’” McLaren writes. “We feel as if our founder has been kidnapped and held hostage by extremists. His captors parade him in front of cameras to say, under duress, things he obviously doesn’t believe. As their blank-faced puppet, he often comes across as anti-poor, anti-environment, anti-gay, anti-intellectual, anti-immigrant and anti-science. That’s not the Jesus we met in the Gospels!”

McLaren claims that the Church has misunderstood Jesus. What is the basis of his charge? Certainly not Scripture! Rather, it seems that the Church is wrong because it fails to understand Jesus in a way consistent with McLaren’s progressivism.

And what of McLaren’s charge that the Church is not following Jesus’ teaching about feeding the poor? Jesus never petitioned the ruling classes to establish entitlement programs to feed the poor. However, He did appeal to individuals to give generously.

Admittedly, we fail in many regards. However, it is not because, as McLaren alleges, the Bible-believing church has willingly distorted His teachings.

GOD SUBSTITUTES: COMPETING WITH GOD

We sense that true equality is the ideal, and we desperately attempt to achieve it through income equality, thinking that this will produce a true equality where love reigns supreme.

However, this noble goal has easily eluded our grasp. Communism has tried to achieve it by equalizing our material existence at a disastrous cost of 100,000,000 exterminated lives. But even after this prohibitive cost, love has remained a far-away ideal.

Perhaps the voluntary Israeli Kibbutz came closest. Clothing, food, work, children, and even sexual partners were equally shared. However, love was fleeting and the entire experiment proved unsustainable.

However, a real and sustainable love, equality, and brotherhood require more than an outward rearrangement of materials and circumstances. They require the hand of God. The Apostle Paul wrote that Our God is able to put us together in a way that achieves a true equality and love for one another:

• “The parts [members] of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” (1 Corinthians 12:22-26)

While we are correct to think in terms of equality, true equality can only be achieved through substantive internal change achieved by the hand of God. To try to achieve this on our own is to force a rose bud to bloom by prying its pedals apart before its appointed time. It is the difference between rape and consensual love. It is the gift of God alone.

THE BIBLICAL CASE AGAINST INCOME EQUALITY (IE)

Actually, the biblical case against income equality is a case that need not be made.  And why not? Because non-income equality—NIE—is clearly the biblical norm, except in very limited and special circumstances! Even the continual admonition to care for the poor is predicated on the fact that in this life there are those who “have” and there are those who “have not.”

Let's look at a few verses that assume NIE:

**One person gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed. People curse the one who hoards grain, but they pray God’s blessing on the one who is willing to sell (Proverbs 11:24-26).

Clearly, in Bible times, some people had accumulated substantial resources, while others were in need. Job, the most righteous of men, had honorably accumulated great wealth.

**[Job] owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East (Job 1:3).

Despite Job's great wealth, God pointed him out to Satan for his surpassing integrity:

**“Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil” (Job 1:3, 8).

Job's great wealth did not lessen God's estimation of him. Even with his vast resources, Job was steadfast in serving God.

In contrast to the situation with Job, Jesus told a parable about a foolish farmer who had a great harvest and had built a new barn to store his bounty. However, the farmer was foolish, not because he had great wealth, but because his wealth had become more important to him than God. Thus, for his compromised heart, he suffered great loss:

**“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:21).

The Bible never identifies wealth as an evil in itself. Instead, it is the love of wealth and anything else in this world wherein the problem lies:

**Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them (1 John 2:15).

To love God is to put Him ahead of everything else (Matthew 6:33). This means that we have to put all of our resources at His disposal. 

However, this truth from God’s word does not mean that a government has a right to control our lives by enforcing a top-down program of IE. In fact, such control is antithetical to God's control and guidance. Therefore, Jesus warned in Matthew 6:24 that we should disdain the idea of taking on a second master—in this case, the government—to micro-manage all of our income.

For the ancient Israelites, God's plan was that Israel was to be led by judges and not by the domination of kings who would tax them to finance their own agendas. However, after warning Israel against taking on a monarch, He relented and acquiesced to their demands.

There is nothing in the Bible that requires IE. Instead, the Mosaic system was designed to benefit the diligent, the righteous, and those who worked hard:

**The righteous eat to their hearts’ content, but the stomach of the wicked goes hungry (Proverbs 13:25).

This is a picture of NIE, not IE. Fairness, according to the way the Bible views these matters, required that those who were hard workers be allowed to profit from their labors:

**All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty (Proverbs 14:23).

Conversely, the wicked were not to be rewarded:

**The house of the righteous contains great treasure, but the income of the wicked brings ruin (Proverbs 15:6).

IE excludes any consideration of conduct. IE would reward drunkenness, drug abuse, and adultery in the same way that it would reward hard work and honesty. In light of this, taking from the righteous hard-worker to give to the wicked was regarded as unjust. However, IE removes the necessary consequences from the wicked and the lazy to their own destruction.

In contrast, God's system would bless the righteous hard worker:

**Wealth and riches are in their houses, and their righteousness endures forever. Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous. Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, who conduct their affairs with justice...The wicked will see and be vexed, they will gnash their teeth and waste away; the longings of the wicked will come to nothing (Psalm 112:3-5, 10).

Once again, instead of income equality, nearly everything in the Bible points to NON-income equality. And even though there are many admonitions to freely give to the needy, it is tacitly understood that the giving is to be done in such a way that people are not dis-empowered or enabled to become irresponsible.

Therefore, the Apostle Paul taught that giving requires great discernment so that those who are not worthy of the church's alms do not receive them:

**Give proper recognition to those widows who are really in need. But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God. The widow who is really in need and left all alone puts her hope in God and continues night and day to pray and to ask God for help. But the widow who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives (1 Timothy 5:3-6).

To support those who were living for their own pleasure was to enable a sinful lifestyle. Instead, the church had a responsibility to the worthy poor who could not support themselves otherwise. Where possible, the family had to take care of their own who were in need:

**No widow may be put on the [alms] list of widows unless she is over sixty, has been faithful to her husband, and is well known for her good deeds, such as bringing up children, showing hospitality, washing the feet of the Lord’s people, helping those in trouble and devoting herself to all kinds of good deeds. As for younger widows, do not put them on such a list. For when their sensual desires overcome their dedication to Christ, they want to marry... Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also busybodies who talk nonsense, saying things they ought not to... If any woman who is a believer has widows in her care, she should continue to help them and not let the church be burdened with them, so that the church can help those widows who are really in need (1 Timothy 5:9-11, 13, 16).

This requires wise discrimination and not IE with its unwillingness to discriminate. To support the wrong people might deprive them of the motivation to trust in the Lord for their support…and to work! It might also enable them to live sinful lives.  

We have already seen how entitlement programs undermine the family and community, trapping their "beneficiaries" in webs of dependency. This is the fruit of indiscriminate giving and will inevitably be the fruit of any programs connected with income equality, should such programs ever be enacted.

We have also seen the utter unsustainability of communism and even socialism. Eastern Europe still has a long way to go before it recovers from the grip of its communist legacy.

Tough love can be merciful. It can motivate people to escape dependency and degradation, as Paul

argued:

**For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the food they eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10-12).

It is not surprising that those who were "unwilling to work" were also "idle and disruptive." We undermine the integrity and character of the needy when we give them an income for which they do not work. 

Compassion requires understanding and discernment—the very thing that IE programs cannot provide. Instead, if we really care about others, we will give them what they truly need and not a monetary drug that corrupts and addicts.

The poor and needy must have access to the same opportunities that others have. However, equal opportunity is not the same thing as enforced equal income, which has been consistently proven to be destructive, in light of the abject bankruptcy of the communist “experiment.”

Meanwhile, there have been many documented, successful Christian interventions that have dignified the poor and have elevated them out of poverty and the alcoholism that so often accompanies their plight. Marvin Olasky has written extensively and in great detail about some of these outreaches in his book, Compassionate Conservatism.

Problem Verses

1. "Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you" (Matthew 5:42).

Actually, this isn't a problem verse. If anything, it supports NIE and not IE, by demonstrating the legitimacy of the presence of both those who have and those who have not.

However, this verse does seem to argue against discriminate giving in favor of indiscriminate giving, or, at least, loaning. But we need to remember that Jesus often taught hyperbolically. Yet, even when he “exaggerated for effect,” a case can be made, even within the contest of the Sermon on the Mount, for Jesus’ support of discriminate giving. In this verse, Jesus shows how even God the Father “discriminated”:

**But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins (Matthew 6:15).

The Father is very discriminate: He forgives only those who forgive!

Jesus even advised others to discriminate against giving to certain people:

“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces" (Matthew 7:6).

2. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need (Acts 2:44-45).

This seems to support IE, since all had "everything in common." However, there are several important differences.

For one thing, the believers willingly and voluntarily pooled their resources. In other words, what they did was light years away from the heavy hand of any government compulsion. This is also a classic example of discriminate giving because not everyone was included—only believers!

For another thing, there is no indication that this was to become the norm for the church or society in general. Instead, the way the early church pooled their resources in this case was for a special purpose at a specific time.

At this time, many thousands of devout Jews living in the diaspora were in Jerusalem for Pentecost. A great multitude of them had just become believers and had no other way to learn about the Gospel other than to remain with the Apostles. However, it is probable that their limited funds would not enable them to remain long in Jerusalem. Therefore, it is probable that the Jerusalem believers thought it necessary to support these brethren while they remained.

Finally, nowhere in the Epistles do we find any move whatsoever towards adopting income equality. Instead, the Epistles contain numerous appeals for individual giving as opposed to appeals to a church bureaucracy to give from its corporate account. Thus, the picture is complete. The Scriptures are clear in their unbridled support of NON-income equality!

Disdain for Distinctions

At the heart of wisdom are necessary distinctions. Distinctions are also at the heart of justice:

·       Whoever says to the guilty, "You are innocent"-- peoples will curse him and nations denounce him. But it will go well with those who convict the guilty, and rich blessing will come upon them. (Proverbs 24:24-25)

These words, along with the distinctions they make, have become offensive to the modern mind. Now, we tend to disdain distinctions in favor of promoting sameness. We have leveled the distinctions between male and female and the innocent and the guilty. There is a rising clamor for income equality, citizenship equality for illegal aliens, and even parenting equality:

·       [British Academic Adam] Swift said parents should be mindful of the advantage provided by bedtime reading. “I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally,” he said.

Insanity? Perhaps! But we first need to ask some critical questions:

1.     What happens to a society that disdains the distinctions between the innocent and the guilty, the lazy and the hard-worker, the devoted parent and the me-centered parent?

2.     Does leveling income, work, and even parenting produce a more just or loving society?

What was the experience under communism? Poverty, coercion, totalitarianism, unsustainability, and the most profound examples of genocide!

In Krakov, Anita and I went on a tour to the ideal communist city, Nowa Huta. All worked in the same factory. All were given the same income and same lodgings. Did the removal of these distinctions create a greater brotherhood? Apparently not! Instead, we were told that they lived isolated lives divided by walls of suspicion. At least, they were guaranteed lodgings and an income, which, at the end, could only be paid in vodka and sugar.

Are the distinctions that we are now rejecting necessary? I think that history would cry out, “Yes!”